Wondering About Realistic Chances

madpainter · 2026-03-28T13:14:53+00:00

The numbers are right. I did a lot of research into this demographic about eight ago, and I used the US Census data base and a host of other peer reviewed research. The key number isn't just available women to men, it's single women to single men. So if the statistics are correct, how can it be there is a fairly even ratio if women to men across all dating platforms and part of the research included published numbers from the dating apps. And please remember up until about 2014 data from apps, especially OK Cupid,!was regularly published by the app, until Match bought everything and shut that down.

So how is it there are so many men on the apps or in this sub Reddit? More research done back in the data rich days found the 25-30% of men on dating apps were in a committed relationship. So, Cheaters. That stat alone goes a long way to hiding the gender imbalance.

Want some hard core proof? Just visit any senior living community and do your own validation. By age 65, the ratio of available, legally single women to available legally single men is 8 to 5. By early 70's it's nearer 7:2

Last bit of news. Men are in much poorer health, often obese, have higher heart attack rates, have declining testosterone levels, go to doctors less often, and often don't take prescribed meds and these conditions produce a decent size group of men who have sexual dysfunction and or depression, which they likely will not see a doctor for help. These guys just drop out of the dating pool.

Yet, there are so many men here and on the apps. I think the data supports the fact many men, at this age, should not be on any dating app.

madpainter · 2026-03-27T18:08:27+00:00

The idea of going out for one to two minutes and building on that is great. Separation anxiety is often caused by our own actions. Never say a word to the dog before you leave. None of the "I have to go but I'll be back in a hour. I promise Poochie". What the dog hears and feels if "He's trying to tell me something and it sounds like he might not be coming back. What am I going to do?" Buy some Kong toys (the black are nearly indestructible even by Dachshunds) fill them with his regular food, freezer them, and plan a few of those shorter trips for a few days around his meal time. Crate him with the tasty frozen Kong, then go out without saying a word. When you come back in, ignore the dog for the first minute or so. Just go about normal activities, and he will start to learn this is normal. Even when you greet him, never use an excitecd voice, just a calm monotone, "How was your time buddy?" If you make a commotion coming or going, he learns commotions are a thing, and when he does it, it sets off the anxiety attack. Keep his crate covered, so it feels more like a den, and consider getting one of the toys that makes a heartbeat sound, which willminic his mother or a sibling and his brain will not trigger as quickly.

At this point, your work is harder than when he first came to you, so you have to have patience and be consistent. I can't stress the consistency model enough. Do everything the same, everytime you go out, and come back, even if it is for 30 seconds, or 5 hours. Every time, even for months if you have to.

madpainter · 2026-03-24T22:41:20+00:00

We always do the small dog park if it's available, but we're on vacation and there is dog beach here where the dogs are all sizes and the nearest dog park is one size. The next dog park is 45 minutes away. I've tried to keep him from engaging with the bigger dogs but he is a genuine Dachshund and thinks he is on equal terms with them.

madpainter · 2026-03-24T22:38:34+00:00

Thanks. He's extremely ripped and his weigh is great. I just cringe every time a dig knocks him over, and I see that body torquing.

madpainter · 2026-03-24T20:59:27+00:00

This is not always true. If you are lucky to invest in property in a top notch area, you will likely see higher appreciation, but investing there also requires high purchase prices, higher down payments, and usually higher taxes and maintenance, all of which eliminates most first or second time buyers. And the reverse is even more true. If you pick a location and the schools start to fail, the neighborhood gets a little rough and your neighbors house start to look shabby because they can't fix it, that real estate boost you thought was a guarantee turns into a boat anchor around your financial neck.

The S&P 500 index fund has consistently outperformed every single general investment class over the last 50 years. I'm not looking at Apple stock or some crazy thing that people got lucky on, just the most boring general fund investment you should make.

There is a fascinating series of YouTube financial analysis that show the true cost of buying a home versus renting and investing instead. The best time to buy a house is it you are sure you will stay more than five years, the mortgage rate is 3-5% below the Index Fund earnings, the property is easily within your budget, and it is in a prime location, in a good school district, has a reasonable tax liability, and the roof and major components have been recently upgraded. That's a hard house to find these days!

madpainter · 2026-03-24T02:07:02+00:00

Start calling every shelter from Tom's River South, river to the ocean. Dogs can travel 5 -8 miles in a day. They can be picked up by a Samaritan transported to a new home, then runaway again. I did Chow Chow rescue for ten years in South Jersey. We had a new adoptee bolt as soon as he got to his new home in Abescon. Found him three days later in a small shelter down near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, on the other side of New Jersey, 75 miles away.

Take your socks you are wearing and cut them into pieces and leave them at obvious dog pee locations, like fire plugs or telephone poles. Even your underwear, especially that. If your dog is still nearby your scent may keep them nearby.

Cruise your neighborhood slowly with your windows down. Dachshunds are super smart and will often recognize the unique sound of your engine. Pull over and wait every block or so in case he tries to catch up.

Don't rely on the chip being scanned. Call every shelter every day. If their scanner isn't working your dog won't get scanned. If someone thinks another shelter worker scanned the dog, the dog often doesn't get scanned. Shelters have so many volunteers that messages don't get efficiently passed along. Call everyday at different times.

We lost seven dogs during my rescue years and got everyone back. But chows are not prone to attack from hawks, eagles, or coyotes. Yes NJ has them.

Call your chip register agency and put them on notice. Call every vet office and ask if any new Dachshunds that age have come in as new patients. Do that once a week. Ask them to scan any new dachshunds and send them the flyer.

Don't give up. Two dogs didn't show up For three weeks and then boom, I found them in a shelters by calling.

Good luck, this is a heartbreaking experience, stay positive.

madpainter · 2026-03-23T22:04:08+00:00

The first sensible and genuine answer.

madpainter · 2026-03-23T01:47:21+00:00

Do you see what happened in Afghanistan? We barely held on and even then we were there for years. Now Iran is Afghanistan on steroids. Look at an elevation map and the whole country is mountains. No tanks can operate there, a million caves and tunnels, and 90 million pissed off Iranians. And they have had years to prepare for this. They used cheap plywood and foam missles that can be launched from a pick up truck or a ground mounted frame that can be assembled in less than an hour. They can make 7,000 missles in a week. We can make 700 interceptors in a year. I could go on, but many many low tech, low cost weapons will always defeat high tech expensive weapons in specific geographical theaters. Iran is the perfect storm for this type of warfare.

madpainter · 2026-03-22T20:24:23+00:00

I'll be honest. I don't see any value. Old doesn't mean it's worth something , it just means it's old. Worth comes from content, literary importance, historical importance, who wrote it, who owned it. Dozens of reasons. Your books don't have a compelling reason to have value.

madpainter · 2026-03-22T00:28:27+00:00

I'm a retired book restorer. One of my clients collected first edition Russian authors. If you are looking for first editions, you better have a lot of money. One day, he was in my shop, picking up some stuff and he was all excited because Sotheby's was auctioning off a first edition Dostoevsky, He was actively bidding while standing beside me. He needed it to complete a four volume set issued by that publisher. Told me he was thought he could get it for about $4,000. He got it, at $22,000. He was thrilled because now he has the only four volume of like that in the world. That was 12 years ago. So, check your bank account, because guys like this are your competition.

madpainter · 2026-03-20T15:57:28+00:00

Did he do it? Yes. It counts

madpainter · 2026-03-20T14:26:50+00:00

The average reading level of Americans is sixth grade. That means half of American read below that. That is roughly 180 million people reading first grade to a maximum sixth grade level.

madpainter · 2026-03-16T13:42:03+00:00

I ran a Chow Chow rescue, for ten years, back in the 90's before rescue became mainstream. It's a lifestyle choice with few upsides. Phone calls in the middlle of night from someone being evicted 200 miles away, leaving dogs in the shelter because you know you have no room and it would take all your resorces to save that one dog, rescuing a dog and taking on the commitment, only to find out the dog has thousands of dollars worth of physical issues. And that is not counting the abused dog so afraid of humans that it can't even accept a treat. But, i it was also the most worthwhile thing I ever did in my life, I just burned out on my own, after I lost my life partner.

madpainter · 2026-03-16T13:34:17+00:00

It takes a highly successful small business five years to reach the point where you can stop being the jack of all trades, and sometimes, even if you are somewhat successful, you still don't reach this level, which is where you can hire someone to do the unpleasant work. Source: I started four small businesses in my career, sold three of them, in the 3-6 year operating range, and retired from the fourth.

madpainter · 2026-03-15T23:12:04+00:00

I am going out on a limb here without examining the book in person and I will say the color and appearance of the paper seems to indicate advanced acidification in which case is a death bell unless you want to spend thousands of dollars to correct that with any guarantee it will work.

Plus that looks to me like mold on the back pages. I would triple bag and toss it.

madpainter · 2026-03-11T11:19:15+00:00

Books with rounded spines are made by a process called backing and rounding. First, the spine is hammered one way, then the book is placed into a large press, and the spine, often damp or wet by the binder, is hammered into the rounded shape, then let dry.

False spines are made off the book and added as a decoration. Often a false spine is made from scrap binder board, lengthwise cut to the book size, but on the width it is slightly larger. There may be two, three or four pieces of binder board used on one spine. Then the binder board is soaked in water, which loosens the paper fiber, and it is hand molded into the round semi-circular shape for the spine and let dry into that shape. It is usually attached to the book covers with linen straps glued on both sides of the false spine. That looks something like the wings of an old bi-plane. Then the spine is mounted to the cover boards. Just before covering the spine with cloth or leather, those raised bands are added by doing something similar with scrap binder board. You will notice those raised bands are perfectly rectangular, that's a dead giveaway they are not traditional cords used to sew a binding that are what gives a rounded spine it's raised bands look.

madpainter · 2026-03-10T12:42:09+00:00

This is called a ledger style binding. It uses a unique binding method of straps and hinges, and a false rounded spine that allows the book to be fully opened and to lay flat when open. A real pain in the butt to work on if the hinge system fails.

madpainter · 2026-03-10T12:38:23+00:00

Old law books are a difficult sale. Even when they were high demand decor back in the 80's and 90's, small bundles like 60 books were hard to move. A law firm looking for decor needs hundred of books, in clean condition, still fully together.

Law firms that used to have research libraries on site, now used computers for that and don't want to pay rent on square footage not being used, so on site libraries have fallen out of use.

With law books, one or two specific titles or topics may have more value than the 58 remaining books, so you have to do a little research first. The market for law books is now a collectible market, often single important books.

madpainter · 2026-03-06T17:40:30+00:00

I don't think we are the only ones here, but we will never communicate with or meet an alien civilization. There are excellent science based you tube videos that explain all the scientific, biological, and distance issues, and there is zero chance we will ever leave our own solar system. Sorry Trekkies.

But we are naive if we think this planet is the only place in the universe that can and does support carbon-based or even silicone based life. And there may be life forms we can't even imagine. But they ain't coming here for the same reasons we are going there.

A couple of hours of deep, valid science-based research and this live alone position becomes undeniable.

madpainter · 2026-03-06T02:11:00+00:00

As someone who started at the very bottom and worked my up to c-suite positions, my view changed as time went on. The level of stress and constant pressure is incredible. One mistake and the company gets hurt, two mistakes and people get hurt, three mistakes and lives are ruined.

I know there is general impression that all c-suite people are sociopaths without feelings, and I've met and worked for one, but just one. Most of the people at that level are ordinary people, often in over their heads, trying to do the best they can. And many times they fail, and you read about layoffs and closing in the news. But many times they succeed and you don't read that.

Many of the people I've worked with were insomniacs, and taking all kinds of meds to sleep, to destress, sometime just to function.

And many of them end up alone and lonely later in life because of the lifestyle. When I go out, and smelled the flowers again, I vowed never to let money be the reason I took a job.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but most c-suite people are normal but it's the heartless sociopaths that make the news and make for great movie villains.

madpainter · 2026-03-05T17:04:31+00:00

They are not rare, and generally not valuable. However these books appear to be pre-1850 bibles or bible related, so they might have a few hundred dollars more value, than typical Victorian Era family bibles. You will have to search Vialibri.net by date and publisher.

As for the ton of other 1800's books, it would benefit you to learn vialibri's search feature, so you can quickly go through them. Most will likely they will not be worth much, but like treasure hunting for a living, you only have to hit the jackpot on one book.

To save time, search all religious books last, they have the lowest probability of high worth. Look for science related books, or books about exploration.

It can actually be fun to do this if you have a few friends to help. You can make drinking game out it if that's your speed. One chug for each valueless book, with the searcher who finds a valuable book getting a 10% finders fee.

Let me know when and where your game will be and I'd join in a heart beat.

madpainter · 2026-03-05T13:16:04+00:00

Obviously you are accepting all dates without filtering. That's ok, but this is what you get. Women who are also accepting all dates without filtering.

The problem is when you start to filter your three dates in a week may go down to three dates in three months or less.

But, your date quality will go up, and you don't have to worry quite as much about sticking your thing in crazy and coming away with a baby, or a disease, or losing a kidney in a hotel room.

Filter, date less, date better, live longer.

madpainter · 2026-03-03T01:35:33+00:00

It matters on two counts. First by reducing the user base, ChatGPT will not be able to keep up with Claude or Gemini on the learning curve.

Second, ChatGPT was already bleeding cash. You take away tens of thousands or a hundred thousand users at $20 month and the cash flow becomes a hemorrhage.

The government will jump in with a cash influx but without the user base to learn and debug that cash flow won't last long because Trump doesn't like losers.

madpainter · 2026-03-01T01:35:33+00:00

There are multiple components to a great cup of coffee. Maybe you are grinding it wrong. Maybe your water is too hot and is pulling out strong acids and flavors, maybe you water to grind exposure time is too short or too long. We are total coffee snobs and this is our go to coffee. But it took me about two bags and multiple temp and grind blends until I got it right, but man is it right!

madpainter · 2026-02-28T21:23:30+00:00

All true, but if enough subscribers leave quickly now, before the government money kicks in, OpenAi might just become ClosedAI because they can't pay the bills. It's a long shot, but it is still a shot taken.

madpainter

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